Amina Lawal

Who is Amina Lawal?

Amina Lawal Kurami is a Nigerian woman. On March 22, 2002, an Islamic Sharia court sentenced her to death by stoning for adultery and for conceiving a child out of wedlock. The father of the child was not prosecuted for lack of evidence and deemed innocent by the court without any DNA tests.

Her conviction was overturned and she has since remarried. Baobab for Women's Human Rights, an NGO based in Nigeria, took up her case, which was argued by Nigerian lawyers trained in both secular and Sharia law. Amina's lawyers included Hauwa Ibrahim, a prominent human rights lawyer known for her pro bono work for people condemned under Sharia law.

In their successful defense of Amina Lawal, lawyers used the notion of "extended pregnancy", arguing that under Sharia law, a five year interval is possible between human conception and birth.

In May 2003, the official response of the Embassy of Nigeria in the Netherlands to the then Sharia-based trial of the State of Katsina in Nigeria, was that no court had given a stoning order on Lawal. They claimed the reports were "unfounded and malicious" and were "calculated to ridicule the Nigerian judicial system and the country’s image before the international community." They claimed no knowledge of such a case.